The Abominable Showman

by Robert Rankin

  The count’s transparent shell, this cloak of psychic protection, shimmered and sparkled as if highly polished. I glanced around and about at the crowd, but if anyone saw it other than me, I really couldn’t say.

  Perhaps they were all concentrating so hard upon Queen Victoria, that they didn’t even notice it.

  ‘That is not the case at all,’ said Barry.

  ‘Then please enlighten me,’ I said. ‘Just what is going on?’

  ‘Attempts have been made on the count’s life,’ said Barry.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘By whom?’

  ‘Various parties,’ said the sprout.

  ‘And how do you know this?’

  ‘I have my contacts,’ Barry said. ‘We holy guardians have a chit chat whilst our hosts are sleeping.’

  ‘Tell me about the count’s magic cloak,’ I whispered.

  ‘Venusian magic,’ Barry said. ‘Illegal on Earth, but up here, anything goes. The black magician Aleister Crowley is on board, the count pays him a retainer. Crowley brokers magic from the Venusians.’

  ‘And I am supposed to be playing a vital role in the count’s downfall?’ I said.

  ‘Something like that, chief. Or not, as the case may be.’

  I felt at my stomach and then scratched at my head.

  ‘Taken up mime, have you, chief?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it’s rather odd. I was starving hungry when I was trapped in that shrunken corridor, but I’m not at all hungry now. How do you account for that, Barry?’

  ‘Ah, chief,’ said my holy guardian sprout. ‘I would be of the opinion that things are coming together. That your big moment is shortly to occur.’

  ‘What, here and right now?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it’s tomorrow night but …..’

  And I would have asked, ‘But what?’ But I had no chance to do so for now things went decidedly odd and I got carried away with the moment.

  Literally.

  A loud and fearful buzzing filled my young and tender ears. A breeze that came from nowhere seen came blowing on my face. Folk who had been standing still began to move about. And faster and much faster did they move.

  I found myself standing in more than one place, which if difficult to picture, is equally difficult to describe. I was here on the grand landing deck, amidst the crowd, but then the crowd went whizzing about. Folk coming and going at ridiculous speed. The glorious spaceship was whipped away by a complicated crane affair and almost instantly another spaceship dropped down and disgorged its passengers, alarmingly fast. Then this spaceship too was whisked away and down came another and another.

  And while this was going on, or possibly before, or probably afterwards, I was on the great central concourse amidships, with its posh shops, restaurants, dance halls, bars, theatres and so ons.

  Folk were whirling every which way. I saw a red carpet fly out of the cinema to flop like a lolling tongue. Then celebrities of the nineteen-twenties rushed along it. I am sure I saw Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin too and I caught sight of a mighty banner announcing the Royal premier of

  FRITZ LANG’S METROPOLIS

  And there was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, hurtling along the red carpet and into the cinema.

  Then I was in a wondrous ballroom with a vast glass floor through which I could see planet Earth. And of another sudden this ballroom filled with gorgeously-dressed people. Lords and ladies and princes and who knew what else and they waltzed at preposterous speeds and did frantic Charleston dances to a band that played nothing it seemed to me but a series of high-pitched whines.

  Then I was at a great state dinner and a masquerade and I beheld fireworks and circling spaceships. And I was here and I was there and wonders went on all around me.

  If all this wasn’t enough, and frankly it was, I also experienced what I can only describe as an epiphany. For I had a vision of God and through this was revealed to me the Great Revelation.

  I saw God, aged, yet ageless, eternal, beyond any Man-made concept of time. God was as I had seen him, short and bearded with his silly squeaky voice and it was revealed to me that God’s first name was Terrance.

  Terrance was God, but he was all alone. Had been alone for ever and for ever. But during this foreverness of solitude, God had been having a good old think about what he wanted to do. God, it appeared, was actually seeking to find a reason for his own existence.

  And that in itself to me, was a Great Revelation.

  But there was more, much more.

  I saw the Creation, as it is laid forth in the Book of Genesis. But with the original bits left in. For in the original Greek, God created upon the fifth day ‘the Great Sea Dragons’, which were altered in later translations to the mundane whales. And there was more besides, because I saw that God had created many other beasts that now we consider merely mythical. He had created the wonderful unicorn and the manticore and the griffin and indeed the vegetable lamb.

  These creatures, benign and peaceful, He had created to adorn the Garden of Eden. For I saw clearly the Garden of Eden and it was beyond anything that I could have imagined. For God began all creation with the Garden.

  The planets, He had created to lay out the Garden upon. All across the universe, countless planets, lit and warmed by countless suns, each a part of a vast divine master plan. In fact a part of a master design, for God was first and foremost, then, and now, a gardener.

  He filled His formally empty universe with the beauty of growing things. With trees and flowers and shrubs and fungi, He adorned each barren world. And God was perfecting His craft. He seeded this world and the next, sprinkling the seeds of life across the universe. Panspermia, some have called it, but that is what He did. And His plants took root upon some planets, yet failed to grow upon others. As the universe is endless, God didn’t mind about this. His kind hand nurtured where nurture was appropriate. And as God can see all, He saw what He had created and He saw that it was good.

  I saw this and I understood, it was the beauty of the Garden that brought pleasure to God. The sprouting of the seeds, the swaying of grass in a gentle breeze. The mighty oaks, the palms, the fruit and flowers, the beauty of it all. All spread across the universe for God to see and smell and touch and enjoy.

  And then came Man.

  And here I received yet further Revelation.

  In our Bibles now we read that God gave Man dominion over every living thing. The beasts of the field and the fowls of the air and every green herb also.

  Once more a slight mistranslation.

  For God created Man to tend the Garden. On every planet on which the trees and flowers and vegetables flourished God placed Man. Man in different forms and shapes appropriate to the environment, but Man.

  And who has not read of The Fall of Man?

  God’s gardeners failed dismally in the tasks set for them. To maintain the noble beauty of the Garden. God gave Man everything he needed to eat and to flourish and placed Man in the most beautiful setting that could ever be imagined.

  Yet Man failed God.

  It brought tears to my eyes, I can tell you. And it brought tears also to the eyes of God.

  Yes I had at that moment an epiphany. I beheld the truth.

  The universe had been created as a vast and cosmic garden. Everything that moved and breathed did so to adorn this garden. Man had been created to attend this garden.

  Man had failed, Man had ruined the Garden.

  I saw Man, the slayer of ‘mythical’ beasts, the tearer-up of plants, the ripper-down of trees, the polluter of rivers, the destroyer of grasslands, the despoiler of countless worlds.

  And I wept greatly to behold these things.

  And glad was I when all was suddenly done.

  The whizzing and whirling of fast action time.

  The truth about Man and the Garden.

  All suddenly ceased and I was once more aboard the great ship Leviathan.

  37

  ‘Barry,’ I said. ‘I’ve just had a revel
ation.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Barry.

  ‘This is all to do with the Garden,’ I said. ‘God’s great garden that is spread all across the universe. And everything is all part of one thing. The Great Whole. And it’s all to do with vegetables, you see.’

  ‘It generally is, chief. Vegetables being so terribly awesome and everything.’

  ‘And today is the day,’ I said and I made a proud stance.

  ‘And I’m not quite sure how we got here,’ said Barry. ‘I am a little confused.’

  ‘You just leave everything to me,’ I said, offering words of comfort. ‘I will sort out everything. I have seen everything. I am part of everything. Everything. Barry.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said my holy guardian sprout.

  ‘And what is more,’ I continued. ‘As I am a part of everything I am aware of what folk are doing, even when I am not in their presence.’

  ‘You are?’ said Barry. ‘That is quite a trick.’

  ‘Just try me,’ I said.

  ‘Fair enough, chief. What is our good queen up to?’

  Queen Victoria sat on the throne, reading The Times newspaper.

  Prince Albert called to her through the open bathroom doorway. ‘Are you going to be much longer, one?’ he called. ‘Only I need to point my prosthetic pecker at the royal porcelain.’

  ‘You will just have to wait,’ said Her Majesty. ‘One is engaged in regal business here.’

  ‘I can’t hold on much longer,’ said the prince.

  ‘One is sure you will manage. Really Albert, you are obsessed with that penis of yours. What was that song you were singing last night about its piercing?’

  ‘If you like it then you should have put a ring on it,’ said Albert.

  ‘You are making this up, chief,’ said Barry.

  ‘Oh no I’m not.’

  ‘We have a very busy day ahead,’ said Her Majesty the Queen. ‘And by “we”, I mean the two of us this time.’

  Albert crossed his wooden leg with the one made out of leather.

  ‘One understands,’ his dear wife continued, ‘that the Poppette will be singing a song tonight written by one’s favourite poet, young John “Boy” Betjeman.’

  ‘The late young John,’ said her husband. ‘Shot dead yesterday morning, I hear. Bang and goodbye to the noble wordsmith.’

  ‘Oh, well never mind, my dear, I suppose he wasn’t that good.’

  ‘Can I be rude to commoners, please?’ asked Albert. ‘For as they say up North, “it do make I larf”.’

  ‘One noticed several Johnny Frenchmen waving at one yesterday,’ said the Queen. ‘You can certainly be rude to them.’

  ‘Thanks one,’ said Albert, relieving himself in the bidet.

  ‘And what of Sir Jonathan Crawford?’ asked Barry.

  ‘What of Sir Jonathan Crawford indeed!’ said I.

  Sir Jonathan Crawford and Lady Agnes Rutherford were once again making the beast with two backs, and rather noisily too. Berty, Sir Jonathan’s holy guardian beetroot was trying very hard to take a nap, but with all the shouting and banging about, this was a futile endeavour.

  ‘Wah-hey and hoozah!’ went Sir Jonathan.

  Then things went rather quiet.

  A little later his lordship asked, ‘Would you care for champagne, my dear?’

  Her ladyship nodded a tousled head. ‘And a cigarette,’ said she. For these were indeed still the days when cigarettes did you no harm at all and smoking the tailor-made variety, especially through an elegant cigarette holder, was the very quintessence of chic.

  His lordship rose with creaking knees and set to uncorking another bottle of bubbly.

  ‘I once went for an entire month on a diet of champagne and cigarettes,’ he said, decorking, pouring, offering, lighting a cigarette, passing it to Lady Agnes. ‘The world became a bit odd towards the end. But it was an experience that I would not have missed. It has been, shall I say, a most interesting and for the most part, joyful life I have led.’

  Her ladyship sipped, then puffed, then sipped again. ‘You speak as if it were almost over,’ she said.

  ‘It well may be, my dear, it well may.’

  ‘And how?’ asked Lady Agnes Rutherford, smoking and sipping and smoking and sipping again.

  ‘My Venusian side pre-supposes it,’ said Sir Jonathan and he toasted the lovely lady with his glass. ‘Today might well prove to be the very last day of my life.’

  ‘I do hope not.’ Her ladyship held her glass out for a refill.

  ‘I am prepared,’ Sir Jonathan freshened her ladyship’s glass. ‘If it is my time, then so be it.’

  ‘Such sombre thoughts,’ her ladyship said. ‘Yet what of me? Does your Venusian side predict my sudden and tragic demise?’

  Sir Jonathan shook his head. ‘You will live a long and happy life,’ he said. ‘I can see you as a very old lady living in your family house on the Butts Estate, Brentford. Growing most curious creatures in your garden.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lady Agnes. ‘I do not know quite what to say.’

  ‘You could say “More champagne, please”.’

  ‘Then I will.’

  ‘You see,’ his lordship strode about the bedchamber of her ladyship in nought but his monogrammed slippers. ‘Something very very big is about to occur. Something far-reaching. It will happen today, it will be a cosmic event. Many will die, yet one will be reborn.’

  ‘That sounds a bit like something from Old Sandell’s Almanac. Or the prophecies of Nostradamus.’

  ‘It will be today and it will involve Count Rostov.’

  ‘Are you able to predict his death, Sir Jonathan?’

  ‘Not conclusively. Certainly attempts will be made on his life today.’

  ‘Attempts, that is in the plural?’

  ‘There will be many, yes. But there is something unfathomable about Rostov. He is not as other men.’

  ‘What of our personal assassin, Al Jolson?’

  ‘I think his intention is to make an event of it. Prove his powers in public, so to speak.’

  ‘This might affect our bounties,’ said her ladyship. ‘Remember every assassin on board must be hoping to claim his or her bounty for the responsibility of causing the count’s death.’

  Sir Jonathan shrugged. ‘Remember, Earth’s laws do not apply here. Blind eyes are turned to murder. Who can say?’

  ‘I do hope you do not come to harm,’ Lady Agnes arose from the bed in all her naked loveliness. ‘I should miss our little get-togethers.’

  She gave Sir Jonathan’s bum a playful smack.

  Sir Jonathan turned. ‘We still have half an hour to kill,’ said he.

  ‘And the count?’ asked Barry.

  ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘the count.’

  The count and Atters were taking a stroll through Count Rostov’s picture gallery. It had much of the National Gallery about it, but for the quality of art upon display.

  This gallery housed Count Rostov’s collection of sideshow and theatre posters. Each framed by gilded ornamentation, each a little gaudy to the eye.

  ‘People seek to kill me,’ said Count Rostov. He wore his bearskin hat and Russian robes, his boots with their bright diamond snow. He twirled a riding crop in an ungloved hand.

  ‘Kill you?’ said Atters, a-shaking his head.

  ‘They do,’ said the count, ‘they do.’

  ‘Can’t see it myself,’ Atters gave his own head a shake. ‘You are a most popular fellow. The Queen adores you, I’ve heard. That is why she is celebrating her Jubilee here, is it not?’

  Count Rostov sighed. ‘The Queen is a royal chumrade,’ he said, ‘but in my profession you do make enemies. Do you know what my enemies call me?’

  ‘Pig face?’ said Atters, affecting a terrible smile.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Old rat-breath?’

  ‘Neither that.’

  ‘How about farty-bum?’

  Count Rostov struck down Atters with his riding crop.

>   ‘Ouch,’ went Atters, still smiling.

  ‘They call me the Abominable Showman,’ said the count. ‘How cruel, don’t you think? I who have brought so much pleasure to so many.’

  ‘People can be ungrateful sods,’ said Atters. ‘Take my Aunty Moo Moo, not her real name of course, but she was somewhat bovine. I was only trying to help her up onto that parapet so she could see the circus parade better. Tragic business. Several killed when she fell from such a height.’

  Count Rostov struck at Atters once again.

  ‘I came up the hard way,’ said the count. ‘Decent enough background, I suppose. Father, shipping magnate, all that kind of caper. Prep school, Oxford, Eton, the Guards, you know the routine.’

  ‘I do indeed,’ said Atters. ‘And –’

  ‘Shut up,’ said the count and walloped Atters. ‘But I wanted to make my own way in the world. Wanted to bring joy to millions. Travelled to St Petersburg. Visited the Hermitage. Viewed the automata, the theatrical costume collection, the circus paraphernalia. Knew at once where my heart lay. Where my vocation lay. I would become a showman. An impresario. I became Count Ilya Rostov, star-maker.’

  Atters offered warm applause. ‘Well done that man,’ said he.

  ‘See,’ said the count, pointing to an aged poster grandiloquently framed in the rococo manner. ‘My very first,’ he made a wistful face.

  REGINALD

  The flea of knowledge

  REMARKABLE PROGNOSTICATIONS.

  EXTRAORDINARY DEMONSTRATION OF INSECT INTELLECT

  THREE SHOWS DAILY

  1 penny

  All classes

  DOG AND DUCK

  GRIMSBY

  ‘Was it a success?’ Atters asked.

  Count Rostov sadly shook his head. ‘You see this scar?’ he said. Atters nodded. The count went on. ‘Couldn’t get a real flea, you see. Not the season, or something. So I had a chumrade of mine Bongo Wassiname, or someone, small chap, had him done up as a flea. You know the costume, clown hat, waders, all that sort of how’s-your-father.’

  The mouth of Atters hung open.